Southerner,

I have a landline service simply because I want to have a phone - is this too much to ask? I also enjoy ADSL over that line, which also allows me to make very cheap calls using Skype.

It is not a matter of cost: mobile phone is not an option for me, because it is unethical. Using it sends harmful electromagnetic waves through innocent people and supports those towers that radiate everyone in their neighbourhood. It also increases the chances of brain cancer.

ADSL uses copper infrastructure, or as you erroneously call them landlines.

So your skype calls use the same infrastructure as the normal PSTN network.

When will we wake up and see Costello has shafted us, he could not get his greedy paws off infrastructure we have owned for decades, he sold it to pay for public servants super.

People have every right to use a landline telephony, a mobile phone or an internet phone service.

Telstra will not invest in FTTH/FTTN unless it is on their terms. Optus has made it quite clear that it will not provide a service to those customers who are not on their network. So if you are an Optus customer but not on their network, you will be asked to find another service provider for landline telephony and the internet.

At present the Telcos are bending over backwards to retain their landline customers. But as more and more people swicth to mobile phones, programs like Skype etc. than Telcos will have no options but to raise the cost of Landline Telephony.

Mobile Phones
If you have a ABN/ACN number why would you not choose a Telco's Business Plan, 62cent untimed calls.
For the average person, $49 capped plan with $230 worth of calls per month, why would you not consider using a mobile phone.

Internet Phone Service
$9.95 a month.
10c Local and National Calls
International Calls you can ring the Philipinnes for example as low as 19c a min. Landline Telephony 77c a min. Mobile Phone 52.8c a min. Choose the right IPS Provider and you can dial 000.

If with FTTN/FTTH means you don't need a telephony landline. Do you really believe that Telstra will maintain a landline telephony service. From a business point of view it does not make any sense at all. Telstra and the G9 group will provide an internet phone service as soon as FTTN/FTTH is up and running and dump the Landline Telephony service. The present indication are that this will occur in the next 5years or so.

Who do we blame, the federal politicans

May 28, 2007

PLANS to be submitted this week by the Optus-led G9 consortium for Australia's new $5 billion high-speed fibre-optic broadband network will be subjected to rigorous public scrutiny, says the competition chief.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graeme Samuel said the process would inject some much needed transparency into a debate that has so far been clouded by rumour, innuendo and "spin doctoring" from both Telstra and G9.

FULL ARTICLE: End telco rumours: ACCC (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/05/27/1180205075431.html)

Given the above, obviously... the game is on!

Selwyn Johnston - Leichhardt Independent 2007

I did not quite understand: are you suggesting, Southerner, that in 5 years or so, due to this and that intrigues between telcos and politicians and in the name of "progress", when I lift the handle of my phone I will hear silence on the other end (and no ADSL/internet either)? if so, I better hurry to pack and move to a more "backward" country...

Landline Telephony

To clarify a point, while Landline Telephony may remain for some time in this country, as a form of telecommunictions it will in time die a natural death. There are number of reasons why this will occur:
1. Mobile Phones. The average person only wants to make calls, send text message and be able to use their phone when travelling overseas. These people will buy one with Quad Band out right and use a Prepaid with capped cost. Paid lets say $49 with $230 worth of calls.
2. Internet Phone Services deliver telecommunications at a reasonable cost.
3. Those who choose to have FTTP connected direct, combine with a mobile phone and a internet phone services will not need to have a landline telephony service.
4. The further use of satellites as the carrier of telecommunications.

Under the sale of the Telstras whereby the Infrastructure was part of it, I have no doubts the company was handed a lemon. Telstra has to realise that FTTP can be deliverd in a number of ways. At best Telstra may have a case for compensation.

Instead of one FTTP system covering the nation there will be at least two, Telstra and the G9 Group. The Government and the ACCC cannot force the G9 Group to include Telstra at no cost or to charge themselves the same fee as Telstra or any other provider. Its call competition in the market place.

It is time that the Goverment and the Telcos told us the truth about FTTP. Right now I am getting a load of bull dust pushed up my nose.

The government calls this responsible economic mangaement of our telecommunications. Whatdo you call it?